switching monitors on amiga 4000 spectrum 24/28

[kaneelschep]

Hi all.

My amiga 4000 has a gvp spectrum 24/28 card.
I wasnt actually using the card, since I first wanted to set up a nice os.
But now I'm ready for it.

I understand I can choose between the original gvp drivers, picasso96 or cybergraphx.
I seem to find a lot of opinions claming cybergraphx is the choice.
So I will start with that.
Good idea?

I remember from back in the days I used the gvp drivers. But that was begin 90's.
I also remember these installs being quite a tricky kitty.
Since if you make a mistake, you have no screen and no way to get it back.
Or am I wrong in this?

And I cant really find if I can use the card without the pass through.
i would like to connect my commodore 1942 to the rgb-out of the amiga. And a new lcd tv to the vga-out of the card.
So whatever happens, I will always have a screen somewhere

I tried to connect the tv to the vga port allready, but it doesnt give any image.

The best would be to connect the rgb and the vga to the same tv.
But I have to solder a rgb to scart cable for that first.

Thanks!

[idrougge]

Run with either CyberGraphX or Picasso96. Both will work with all current software.
You can use the card without pass-through.

[utri007]

Do not use Picasso96 with it if you wanna use whdload games with it.

[kaneelschep]

I noticed its not easy to find cybergraphx 4... Only updates for download everywhere. Anyone have an idea?

Tried picasso in the meantime. The prefs screen is somehow way to long. Cant click ok or anything.

Good start :P

[kaneelschep]

hmm.. I searched some more. It seems to not be sold anymore. vesalia shows it, but doesnt show price or way to buy.

On a plus point. I did find my official idefix diskette! Also quite a gem.

[kaneelschep]

Picasso96 made a very long prefs window where i could do nothing cause i could not see the ok cancel buttons.

Cybergraphix 4 is unfindable and 3 missed files. Once i found all, it didnt want to save the resolutions i made. After reboot it forgot them all.

The egs driver actually was very pleasant to install. And works with the normal screenmode prefs. I have the tv on the vga cable of the spectrum. And the amiga 4000 on the 1942.
So far ok using the normal screenmode prefs i got it on 1024x768 anything else but 800x600 doesnt show any picture.
And the egs screenmode program crashes. And i guess thats where all the goodie screenmodes with the 24bit colours are.

Ah well. Progress! ;-)

[Jope]

Originally Posted by kaneelschep

Picasso96 made a very long prefs window where i could do nothing cause i could not see the ok cancel buttons.

How about you just define a larger screen than is visible (with the OS supplied Prefs/Screenmode) for the moment you do the initial configuration? The AmigaOS can scroll the screen if it doesn't fit in the visible size.

[kaneelschep]

Good idea! I thought about that too, but too late.
By then I was allready putting cybergraphx on it.
It was getting late and I just thought; next!

I found some different egs drivers on aminet. 6.2 version and 7.1 version with a 7.4 update.
What is the difference with these and the 5 disks on the amiga hardware page.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/egs28

I also found a russian ftp site full of amiga software. And cybergraphx v4. Since a legit version is nowhere to be bought or found, I will try that. Just to see if i can even use it.
the egs driver is not that stable too, i noticed.

[Jope]

CGX is my personal choice, I always found it a bit more user friendly than P96 + draggable RTG screens, can't say no to that. ;-)

You should install all the updates, especially 3.9 was somehow incompatible with a version check in the CGX library.

[kaneelschep]

I saw the cybergraphx load screen, and remembered we always used that in the 90s. It was really the best one for our setup.

The one i downloaded asks for the cybergraphx cd at install.. So gotta find a workaround for that.
Maybe i can make a cd image from it and mount that..

But score! I found our actual amiga ide drive from the 90s! :-D
Lets see what treasures are on that.

[kaneelschep]

Back to picasso96. First 2.0 and updated with 2.1e.
Of course the prefs read fine at high res interlaced.
Stupid.. Its been a long while. ;-)

I have a sony kdl-32L4000 lcd tv as second monitor.
Which can do most screens at 60hz vertical. And some at 75.
It is quite picky though.. Is there a way to set the horizontal frequencies more precise?
Right now only 640x480@24bit works. And 1024x768@8bit.
The rest is out of scope..

[zipper]

Adjust the pixel clock. Then the screen size and placement. And then the pixel clock again and so on. Tedious nitpicking.

[gulliver]

I highly recommend you to stay with Picasso96 over CybergraphX (CGX).

CGX is very easy to configure but it is bugged and highly incompatible with many well behaved programs and system extensions. Picasso96 is the exact opposite.

Believe me when I say this: we are currently betatesting the upcoming AmigaOS 3.1.4, and CGX seems to be an endless source of all kind of anomalies and bad programing practices that require developers to work around them (with no support whatsoever from the CGX developer). Picasso96 on the other hand, behaves as advertised.

[kaneelschep]

I actually got CybergraphX_4 into an iso (which I made on the amiga) and installed. Later I thought to myself why, since the files came from a pc with poweriso etc.. Would have taken me a lot less time to make, but it felt very much like old times :P
Then the cybergraphx updates didnt want to install. And the cybergraphx screenmode refused to start.
dabbled with the egs drivers and updates for a day or two. But again problems with the screenmode program.

So yes. Back to picasso96. It seems like the only choice.
With the update to 2.1e it has been very stable so far. Also the installation went smooth. Screenmode programm is easy enough after some try and error.
The tv is just very picky with the horizontal frequencies. Most frequencies the tv wants, the card just cant make.
So I hooked it up to some tft screen I had laying around. I have quite a collection of smaller sizes to choose from. Which mostly have the same possible frequencies, just resolution differences.
Now I have some good resolutions. Still not too much. But usefull ones.
Lets see how this behaves on the long run.

[kaneelschep]

So it all worked fine.
Till suddenly it didnt
Now when it boots, I get an error on devs:monitors/spectrum.
It stopped working after I tried to make my 4way adapter work..
I am afraid it messed up something and the videocard died on me.. .

Is there a way to test the videocard?

[grelbfarlk]

There should be a tool in the Picasso96/debug directory called P96test or something like that. Should read the amount of memory available and available screenmodes.

A tip I keep dropping everywhere since Ceaich from the Vampire team told me about is the tool on Aminet called "UMC" Universal Modeline Calculator.
http://aminet.net/package/driver/video/umc
This makes it very easy to get working modes out of Picasso96. If you want say a 640x480 screen at 60hz. umc 640 480 60 and it gives you all the values to put into P96mode. Maybe some slight tweaking is needed afterward.

If you have tried to install EGS, CGX and P96 at various points, you need to remove ALL of the files from that previous RTG system install from libs: envarc: devs: and so on.

[kaneelschep]

Before I installed any videodriver, I made a copy of all the files on the workbench partition on another partition, which I just copy back when it is not to my liking.

I will try that all!

[kaneelschep]

The check boards program in the debug folder needs the spectrum monitor programm to run. Which crashes everytime I start it.

works fine in winuae. And used to work fine om the amiga too.

ANy other way to test videocard?

[grelbfarlk]

What does showconfig show for the Spectrum?

[kaneelschep]

I will check tonight. I think it as some unidentified board. But it does show it.